ancestry.com hit by hackers as site goes offline for two days
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The ancestry.com website has been hit by a massive hacker attack taking it offline for two days.
The firm was forced to take the Facebook to explain to problem to its users.
Officials at the Provo, Utah-based company say hackers on Monday afternoon fooled the site into thinking there was an inordinate amount of traffic flooding it, which crashed its server.
During the attack, Ancestry websites along with the Find A Grave website were clogged with massive amounts of bogus traffic that took the sites down
WHAT IS A DDOS ATTACK?
Hackers can use a network of 'zombie' computers to sabotage a specific Web site or server.
The idea is pretty simple -- a cracker tells all the computers on his botnet to contact a specific server or Web site repeatedly.
The sudden increase in traffic can cause the site to load very slowly for legitimate users.
Sometimes the traffic is enough to shut the site down completely.
'Around 1:30 p.m. MT on Monday, June 16, 2014, attackers targeted Ancestry with a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS),' wrote Scott Sorensen, chief technology officer for the site.
'During the attack, Ancestry websites along with the Find A Grave website were clogged with massive amounts of bogus traffic that took the sites down.'
However, he said no data had been stolen.
'This attack overloaded our servers with massive amounts of traffic but did not impact or access the data within those servers. No data was impacted in any way.'
The firm took to Facebook again today to admit that its services had still no recovered fully.
'The Ancestry websites are still recovering from the DDoS attack.
The Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) attack saw the Ancestry websites along with the Find A Grave website were clogged with massive amounts of bogus traffic that took the sites down.
'Thank you for your patience as we work to restore them fully.'
However, some users took to Twitter to complain.
One blogger, however, pointed out the heated complaints were a little too serious.
'Good grief! Not being able to get to Ancestry for the day is a first world problem,' wrote Lorine McGiniss Schulze.
Think about it! There are children starving in other parts of the world. Women are being stoned for marrying without their parents' approval. People are being shot for being Christians.
'Those are big deals. Not accessing Ancestry or FindAGrave for a day are small issues in the overall scheme of life.'
Put the internet to work for you.
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